visitors that they perfectly understood their 
use. This was a lesson of civilization for 
which they were doubtless indebted to the 
previous visit of Cook, for in no part of the 
northern island does it appear that M. Ma- 
rion found the people to have any acquaint- 
ance whatever with iron. The utmost 
cordiality and harmony existed between 
the natives and their visitors for a space 
bordering on five weeks, and it has never 
been explained on what ground the for- 
mer, in a moment when the French were 
least prepared to make resistance, exhibited 
the most transcendent perfidy conceivable, 
by murdering M. Marion himself, four of 
his officers, and a boat's crew of twelve 
persons, who had just landed from their 
ship! It does not appear that M. Crozet, 
the first Lieutenant, whom Cook afterwards 
met at the Cape of Good Hope, and de- 
scribes as “a man possessed of the true 
Spirit of discovery,” who published the 
voyage of M. Marion, that during his stay 
at the Bay of Islands, Natural History, in 
any one department, was in the least at- 
tended to. No collection of plants was 
In 1772, Captain Cook was again de- 
m by government, to prosecute fur- 
The Resolution and Adventure were 
equipped for this important service, and 
Reinwold and George Forster (father and 
son) were attached to the expedition in the 
capacity of Naturalists. Upon reaching 
the Cape of Good Hope, Cook was in- 
Pe by the entreaties of the Forsters, 
allow the celebrated Naturalist, Spar- 
an, then at Cape Town, to join the ex- 
tion. It is possible that to this cir- 
us the species of plants 
A in that voyage, but the publica- 
tion of the Work entitled Florule Insula- 
Tum Australium 
the title. 
of that 
fis annus p 
» easdem delineabat ; ego vero totum 
SPECIMEN OF THE BOTANY OF NEW ZEALAND. 
997 
me zoologicis descriptionibus dicabam. 
Verum dum Sparmannus plantas accura- 
tius examinaret, filius et ego sepe in con- 
silium vocati in commune consulebamus.” 
Char. Gen. Pl. pref. p. ii. 
In prosecuting the second Voyage of 
Circumnavigation, to the eastward, Captain 
Cook made the shores of New Zealand at 
Dusky Bay, within which he moored the 
Resolution on the 25th of March, 1773, 
and there remained nearly seven weeks. 
The country at the back of this bay is de- 
scribed as exceedingly mountainous, the 
hills forming part of that great chain which 
extends throughout the larger island from 
Cook's Strait. These hills are said to wear 
an aspect, than which a more rude and 
craggy feature can rarely be seen; for the 
mountain-summits are of stupendous height 
and consist of rock, totally barren and 
naked, except where they are covered with 
snow. Skirting the sea-shore, the land and 
all the islands in the bay are densely 
clothed with wood, nearly down to the 
very water's edge. The trees, Cook tells 
us, are of various kinds, such as are com- 
mon to other parts of New Zealand, those 
of Conifere and Myrtacee being fit for the 
ship-wright, the house-carpenter, and cabi- 
net-maker. 
** Except," continues our Navigator, ‘in 
the River Thames, I have not seen finer 
timber in all New Zealand: the most con- 
siderable for size is the Spruce-Tree ( Da- 
crydium cupressinum, Soland.), many in- 
dividuals of which were observed from six 
to eight and ten feet in girth, and sixty and 
eighty, to even one hundred feet high, quite 
large enough to make a main-mast for a 
fifty-four-gun ship." 
Of the leaves of this tree Cook made 
beer, which he gave to his ship's company; 
and when well prepared, and corrected 
from its extreme astringency, by a decoc- 
tion of Philadelphus,! or Tea-plant, prov- 
1 Anderson, the Surgeon and investigator of Natu- 
* ral History during the third voyage of Cook,says, *' we 
drank" (an infusion of, he means) the leaves of the 
Philadelphus ( Leptospermum scoparium) as Tea, and 
found it had a pleasant taste and smell, and might 
make an excellent substitute for the Oriental sort. 
Cook's third Voyage, 1. p. 148 
